Top 5 Alternative Web Browsers for Ubuntu Linux

If you're tired of everyone talking about Chrome and Firefox, it's time to try out something new. Windows users already have tons of web browsers to choose from, but only a few of them are worth your time. Linux (particularly Ubuntu) on the other hand, doesn't offer that many choices. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't any quality browsers for our favorite distro. In fact, out of dozens of alternative browsers, we've chosen the best 5 so that you would be able visit our site from the browser you love rather than sticking to the mainstream ones.

So, without further ado, here some of the best alternative web browsers for Ubuntu Linux:

Epiphany

Epiphany is a GNOME-based web browser that's both fun and simple to use. Sporting a well-designed interface, Epiphany complies with all the modern standards. The Epiphany Manifesto sums up the project goals as follows: Simplicity, Standards Compliance, and GNOME integration. Targeted towards non-technical users, Epiphany is incredibly fast and has been translated in over sixty languages. To make sure that you don't miss Firefox or Chrome, the open source web browser comes with support for extensions that add to existing functionality. Though there aren't that many add-ons to choose from, a few of them are particularly great. For example, Mouse Gestures, Tab Groups and Smart Bookmarks. Furthermore, if you care about how pages are displayed in the browser, don't worry as Epiphany scores a perfect 100/100 in Acid 3 tests.

To quickly install Epiphany, type or paste the following commands in your Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T)

sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser

Midori

Midori, which stands for 'green' in Japanese is a fast and lightweight web browser that uses the Webkit rendering engine. Part of the Xfce desktop environment, Midori is also the default browser for Bodhi Linux and Elementary OS. The open source web browser comes with a clean and simple interface that makes it really fast when compared to other browsers. To add to existing functionality, Midori also supports extensions like Adblock, form history, mouse gestures and cookie management. Even though still in heavy development, Midori is pretty stable for daily use.

To install Midori on Ubuntu, type in the following commands:

sudo apt-get install midori

Opera

Opera is one of the fastest web browsers around. It comes packed with features that even top browsers like Firefox and Chrome don't have yet. If you own a smartphone, we're pretty sure you must have heard of this browser before. It comes with amazing unique features like content-blocking (for distraction free browsing), BitTorrent support, visual tabs, tab peeking and more. Other than that, Opera offers almost all the features that Chrome and Firefox provide. Even though the desktop version is not as popular as its mobile counterpart, Opera does have a huge cult following.

Arora

Arora is a lightweight cross-platform web browser based on Webkit technology. Developed using the Qt toolkit, Arora is a fully standards-compliant browser that boasts of a fast and powerful JavaScript engine. Translated in 30 languages, Arora comes with a set of powerful features that make it one of the best browsers for this platform. Apart from the standard must-have features like bookmarks, history and tabbed browsing, Arora comes with some great features like ClicktoFlash plugin, privacy mode, session management, smart location bar and an incredibly quick startup time. Moreover, Arora integrates perfectly with any desktop environment including Ubuntu.

To quickly download and install Arora type the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install arora

Rekonq

The third webkit-based browser on this list is Rekonq. It is a lightweight web browser based on WebKit and KDE technologies. Though designed for the KDE desktop, Rekonq works perfectly fine with Ubuntu. In fact, if you use Kubuntu (KDE version of Ubuntu) you'll find Rekonq as the default browser. The open source browser comes with all the essential features like tabbed browsing, ad-blocker, support for addons, proxy support and more. One thing that makes Rekonq stand apart from other browsers on this list is its ability to render websites perfectly. Since Rekonq is based on the same rendering engine as Chrome and Safari, it displays all your favorite websites without any major problems.

To install Rekonq on your Ubuntu box, type in the following commands in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install rekonq

Written by: Abhishek, a regular TechSource contributor and a long-time FOSS advocate.

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4 comments

Epiphany is also based on Webkit, so four of the browsers you mentioned are based on the same rendering engine. Some additional things to look at might include Galeon since it is based on Gecko, Amaya because it is both a browsers and a web editor, Dillo for a bit of an old school graphical web browser with a tiny foot print, and as I still don't always use X it's good to compare a couple of text based browsers like links and lynx.

Just some info to give a point of reference. I bought this new laptop that I'm typing on about six months ago. I downloaded Kubuntu so that I could install it using MS Explorer. Since I was using the wireless at a cheap hotel it took about four hours downloading the ~one GB file using Explorer. But I had to re-download another file of about that same size since I had downloaded the wrong version. But this time I used Chrome. Chrome downloaded the file in about half the time, about two hours.mm